Chapter 6
During the rest of the week, Sawyer tried to untangle her feelings, with little luck. The days passed in a blur, until Thursday—when the internal launch of new titles broke up the grind a bit at work.
Sawyer liked launch days. It was when everyone who worked at the imprint met in the publishing house’s big boardroom. Sometimes snacks were brought in—bagels, Danish, cheese, crackers, grapes, cookies. The room buzzed with excitement as everyone got settled. Witty banter bounced back and forth among the more senior employees, until the head of the imprint called the room to order.
Then, the presentations started. Editors took turns introducing their upcoming novels, giving enticing summaries of the books’ plots and telling the room a little bit about the authors, and sometimes mentioning the books’ foreign rights sales, if they already existed.
When an editor was really in love with a book, they told the story of how they’d encountered and fallen in love with the manuscript, and why. It was transporting, like hearing about a romance. And then, if it was done in time, there was something magical about a cover reveal. Sawyer loved seeing how the art department had translated the manuscript into an image. It was a transformative moment, the moment when a book went from being a mere stack of white pages or a word-processing document—to something you could picture on a bookstore shelf. Sawyer always felt a tingle of excitement when new covers were revealed.
That Thursday’s meeting served as a much-needed distraction for Sawyer. Johanna presented the TIP sheet and other materials Sawyer and Kaylee had worked all week to prepare, and the presentation went well. The book in question laid bare the emotional inner lives of characters who lived in a small blue-collar factory town in remote Maine. The book cover that the art department had come up with was striking—a juxtaposition of beautiful rural New England as contrasted with the brick smokestacks of an old factory, depicted in the American realist style of an Edward Hopper painting.
Johanna did not mention her latest acquisition—the unsolicited manuscript that Sawyer had pulled from the slush pile—but this wouldn’t have been the time for that. Eventually, that book would be allotted its own presentation in yet another launch meeting. It would get talked up and get its own cover reveal.
Sawyer couldn’t wait.
After the launch, the rest of the workday went by quickly. Johanna was happy with how her presentation had gone, so at quarter to five, she told Sawyer and Kaylee they could pack up a little early for the day and go home.
Sawyer took the subway home, thankful for both the early reprieve and—after waiting on a particularly gross, sauna-like subway platform—the train car’s vigorous air-conditioning. Once back at her apartment, she fell into what had become her regular routine: throwing all the windows open, switching on the oscillating fan, and settling into the computer desk to check her email.
“You’ve got mail!”
It was from the online literary e-zine.
Sawyer clicked on it, quickly scanned the message, and…realized it was a notification from the editor letting her know that her poem had gone live.
Congratulations!he’d written. We are so proud to share your work.
Sawyer clicked on the link he’d pasted into the email, a nervous flutter in her stomach.
A browser screen flashed open and loaded the e-zine’s landing page. THE DECKLE EDGE, it read in a pleasing font, above an image of original artwork by one of the visual contributors. Below that was the issue’s table of contents…and there it was: Sawyer’s name, and the title of her poem. She clicked on it, and the site jumped to her poem’s page.
She stared at it in disbelief, admiring the layout. There was nothing too amateur, nothing too bright and internet-y. No newfangled fonts in fluorescent green or royal blue. Instead, a classic, dignified black font on a pale taupe background. Her poem was centered to the left with another image of original art from the issue’s visual contributor to the right of it. It looked really nice—something she could be proud of.
She’d put something out there! She could only cross her fingers and hope that it was worthy. She reminded herself that she was safe from the judgment of anyone she knew, because she hadn’t told anyone.
Then she remembered: She’d told Nick. She’d even sent him the link. But that was before her poem was up. It was silly to think he might remember and go online and look at it—wasn’t it?
She felt her cheeks burning to picture it.
She tried to push the sudden rush of self-consciousness aside as she clicked through the rest of the issue, reading the other contributors’ work. This occupied the better part of an hour. She studied the others, trying to learn from their poems and stories, and feeling honored to have her poem in their company.
Finally, she closed the browser window, then her email inbox. But the very second she logged off, the phone rang, making her jump. Its shrill, tinny bell cut through the air like a knife. She grabbed for it.
“Hello?”
“Sawyer! I’ve been trying to get through for ages—your line has been giving me a busy signal for an hour!”
“Hey, Mom. I was logged on to the internet.”
“You were on the internet? During that whole time?” her mother questioned in disbelief. “What were you doing?”
Sawyer squirmed.
“I was reading something.”
“What were you reading?”
“A literary magazine,” Sawyer answered. She considered telling her mother about her poem.
Her mother was an English professor.
The whole family shared a very genuine love of literature.
Her mother was an excellent critic.
Her mother was less than enthusiastic about the fact that Sawyer had chosen trade publishing over academia. What would her mother think of dabbling in creative writing?
Her mother was an excellent critic.
“A literary magazine? On the internet?” her mother echoed now, as though the idea of something literary on the internet was impossible.
Sawyer quickly made up her mind to keep the news about her poem to herself.
“Hey, Mom—I forgot to ask: How was the conference?”
“Oh! It was lovely! I gave my paper and the Q A after went great. And I wish they had it in Florida more often—your father and I felt like we were on vacation.”
“Did you guys get to the beach?”
“We sure did. I might even have a tan somewhere under this sunburn.”
Sawyer laughed.
She listened as her mother chatted about the academic conference that Carol had just attended with Sawyer’s father.
Her parents were both professors at a small conservative college in Oregon, where Sawyer had grown up. They both taught and loved literature; Nick had been right about that part. But Sawyer’s father, Dennis, was an “early modernist”—in other words, he taught Shakespeare—while her mother was the one who adored American literature, and had chosen Sawyer’s name.
Carol had had her heart set on a university life for her daughter, in part because Carol’s own entry into academia had been hard-won. She hadn’t considered the path open to her, marrying Dennis while they were still undergrads, and tagging along as “the wife” when he went to grad school. She’d typed and proofread his dissertation, even written a significant portion of his footnotes. By the time Dennis had landed a tenure-track position in Eugene and Sawyer had been born…Carol had realized that she wanted her own academic career. She worked part-time on her master’s, then a PhD. After that, she toiled as an adjunct and a lecturer until she could finally throw her hat in the ring as a full-time faculty member at her husband’s university. Carol knew that’s how people thought of it: her husband’s university. It didn’t matter that Carol had become the more active scholar. It didn’t matter that, in recent years, Carol had published more, had gone to more conferences, had given more papers than her husband had. Some faculty members would forever regard her as a “spouse hire.”
When it came to Sawyer, Carol saw an opportunity for her daughter to enjoy the obstacle-free version of her own life.
Sawyer could tell her mother was still hoping Sawyer would come to her senses and apply to go to graduate school after all. A year after Sawyer and Charles made the move to New York, Carol was still dropping little comments into their conversations—comments like: It’s never too late! Or else: There may be some grad programs that might even find your recent work experience in trade publishing very interesting.
It sometimes made their conversations tense.
“How are the wedding plans coming along?” Carol asked, once they’d finished catching up about the conference.
“Good,” Sawyer answered. She told her mother about Kathy’s latest plan—an impromptu bridal shower in September. The two moms were coming into town for Sawyer’s second-to-last dress fitting. Kathy wanted to do brunch at Bergdorf’s, followed by a Broadway musical, then some party favors and gift opening in Kathy’s hotel suite.
“Just so long as the musical isn’t Cats.” Sawyer’s mom laughed.
“Understood,” Sawyer agreed.
“I’ll give Kathy a call and ask if there’s anything I can do to help with the planning,” Carol offered.
When Sawyer had allowed Kathy to take the reins, Carol hadn’t been offended. She’d understood it as being what Charles and Sawyer wanted. It wasn’t her area of expertise, anyway. Running a grad program, chairing a committee, or planning an academic conference, yes. Planning a society-page wedding in Manhattan…not so much. She’d made it clear she wanted to help, but not get in the way.
Sawyer sometimes wondered, though, how her mother truly felt about the engagement itself. Carol had never said anything specifically, but Sawyer suspected she wasn’t crazy about the idea of her daughter getting married so young. The world had afforded Sawyer’s generation of young women more choices—and here Sawyer was, voluntarily choosing the old-fashioned path Carol felt had once held her back. Another nail in the coffin that was Carol’s hopes for Sawyer to eventually go to grad school and become a professor.
And while Sawyer’s parents liked Charles—or at least genuinely seemed to welcome him into the family—Sawyer knew her mother also had some opinions about what it was to be the wife of a corporate lawyer. Carol was outspoken about her disapproval in an abstract sense, as though she wasn’t criticizing Charles and Sawyer per se, but faceless versions of a young corporate lawyer making his way up the ladder, and the young wife willing to shelve her ambitions for his.
It wasn’t mean-spirited, but it was…opinionated.
Sawyer loved her mother dearly; her mom was the smartest human she knew. But sometimes she wished it was easier to tell her things.
“How is Charles doing?” Carol asked now, over the phone.
“He’s good…” Sawyer replied.
Her mind went immediately to the merger, to his long hours, to what Nick had said. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than for her mother to reassure her that the receipt from the Chinese restaurant didn’t mean anything.
Carol seemed to pick up on her daughter’s hesitation.
“Charles is OK?” Carol echoed Sawyer’s words back to her. “And everything’s good?”
Sawyer bit her lip.
“Yeah, of course,” she said, forcing a smile into her voice. “We’re just, you know, so busy. He probably won’t be home until pretty late tonight.”
“And…are you OK?” her mother added, gently.
Sawyer felt a pang of embarrassment. She shook herself and brightened. “I’m good,” she insisted.
There was a pause. Sawyer knew her mother was debating whether or not to let it go.
“They must really like him at Wexler Gibbons to have picked him to be part of such a big case,” Carol said finally, attempting a positive note. “I imagine it’s very competitive among their junior associates.”
“It is,” Sawyer agreed. “I’m proud of him.”
“Well,” Carol continued, shifting back into pedantic, professor-mom mode. “I suppose this is all part and parcel of marrying a lawyer, especially one who is just starting out, and as ambitious as Charles.”
Sawyer thought she could hear just the slightest hint of I told you so in her mother’s voice. She bristled.
“Yes,” Sawyer agreed, firmly closing the topic to further discussion. “It is.”
After they hung up, Sawyer made a mental list of all the things she hadn’t told her mother about:
Her loneliness.
Her poem.
The manuscript she’d found in the slush pile.
The fact that she’d begun to wonder if the long hours Charles worked were about more than just being a junior associate at a major New York law firm.
There was no one to talk to about that last part.
Except…that wasn’t true. There was one person, and Sawyer had agreed to meet him on Friday—the very next day—at 2 p.m.
Sawyer sat there, still recovering from the aftermath that was talking to her beloved mother, wondering how to feel about her impending meeting with Nick. She supposed she ought to feel some relief in being able to discuss her suspicions about Charles with someone.
Mostly, she just felt nervous.